


Satinalia Tree

by moondor_majesty



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 18:07:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10576659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moondor_majesty/pseuds/moondor_majesty
Summary: Isabela knocked on Merrill’s door again, shivering against the icy air that had swept into Kirkwall the past week.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "Trimming the Tree" at femslash yuletide 2014. 
> 
> Sure. Enjoy this blatantly Christmas fic in April, why don't you. That I couldn't be arsed to upload to A03 until two and a half years later.

Isabela knocked on Merrill’s door again, shivering against the icy air that had swept into Kirkwall the past week. 

The fact that she’d mostly just like to be  _indoors_ , right now, was starting to wear away at her disappointment over not being invited to join Hawke… oh, wherever she was currently tromping around. Sundermount, possibly?

After spending far too long thinking of all the ways that she was  _definitely_ better with a blade than Fenris, and far better company than Anders, the door swung open. Merrill’s face lit up, then fell just as fast.

“Oh. It’s just you?” Merrill strained to peer over Isabela’s shoulder, as if she thought the others might just be crouching behind that pile of crates, over there. Or about to round the corner and join them, at any moment.

“‘Oh, it’s just you?’ Well, that’s a nice way to greet someone,” Isabela remarked, shaking snow off her boots as she stepped into the (thankfully, warm) little home.

“Sorry. I just expected… I know Aveline had to work, but I’d thought at least Hawke or Varric…” Merrill trailed off. 

“There was some urgent business in a cave. Or a mine?” Isabela frowned, trying to recall. They all looked alike around here, anyway. Not that that stopped Hawke from almost-always going the wrong way. “Oh well. At least  _we_  don’t have to wash darkspawn entrails out of our hair, tonight.” 

There was a roaring fire in the pit behind Merrill’s desk, and a sparse little evergreen in the corner, with a couple crates full of trinkets at the base of it. Most looked rustically homemade – animals, stars, and elvish symbols fashioned from twigs, cheap beads and scraps of fabric. Then, there were things they’d found on various quests. Such as a polished dragon tooth, suspended by a thin bit of yarn.

She hung it on one of the better-looking branches. Surprisingly, it actually worked. For a shiny fang dangling off a tree that was a bit too brown on one side, anyway.  

“Do you think we should wait till they get back?” Merrill wondered, plucking a bird-shaped one out of the crate.

“Knowing Hawke, she’ll have brought back six new daggers, three rings, and a sprig of elfroot to put on the tree, herself.”

“You can’t hang daggers off a tree,” Merrill admonished. “That’s so… un-Satinalia.”

“Yet, the tooth of something that tried to kill us…”

“You don’t remember when we got that?” Merrill glanced up, unearthing a box of tiny silver icicles. 

“Was it the dragon we fought in the cave? Or, the  _other_  dragon we fought in the cave? Or maybe the other one…” Honestly, it was all starting to blur together, a bit. “I don’t tend to memorize my enemies’ dental patterns. I just stab them till they fall. Or, they make me fall…”

“It was a young one. A dragonling, almost,” Merrill filled her in. “I was aiming at this bigger one that Hawke and Aveline were dealing with, and he snuck up on me from behind. You brought him down in two swipes. The fang makes me think of  _you_. They all do. Not all you, I mean – other people, too. If they were all memories of you, that’d be a bit obsessive…”

“You can obsess about me, if you like,” Isabela replied, which made Merrill’s cheeks flush about the same shade of red as the garland at the bottom of the box. 

The elf didn’t say anything for a few moments, hanging ornaments here and there, until –

“Do you think I should make a Feast Day Fish? For the big day, if anyone actually comes?”

“Oh, please don’t.” Isabela wrinkled her nose at the thought. She liked fish. Just not that weird fish pudding thing that people insisted on serving around Satinalia.

“I don’t know where I’d even get a mackerel, anyway. That’s more of a Ferelden thing,” Merrill mused. “I have been wanting to try my hand at egg nog, though.”

“Now  _that_  is a holiday treat I can get behind. Provided it’s more rum than nog,” she added.

Soon, they’d emptied the box and were just down to weaving the fluffy, metallic garland around the tree. It filled it out a bit. Or course, there was still room for more additions to its branches. Especially at the top, where it was missing something particularly grand and… shiny.

Fortunately, Isabela had just the thing. An amulet she’d looted after a fight in Darktown. She remembered its owner crumpling to the ground as a blast from Merrill’s staff struck him square in the chest. Just in time, too – as he’d seemed pretty set on firing a round of arrows in Isabela’s direction.

“One more memory of us for the Satinalia tree,” Isabela said, winding the chain around a few of the topmost branches, so that the flickering light from the fire struck the large amber gem just  _so_.

“Have you got a tree, Isabela?” Merrill asked, absently. She cast a quick spell, and a light layer of snow fell over the evergreen and its ornaments – completing the look.

“Just this one, kitten,” she replied, feeling out for Merrill’s hand and lacing their fingers together. A strange warmth that had nothing to do with the flames behind them spread through her, as she stared back at their tree. 


End file.
